Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz Snags Chelsea Loft

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We first heard it from a trusted celebrity real estate tattletale, The Rolling Stone, who also kindly pulled up and provided Your Mama with the public record evidence that Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz of Beastie boys fame and fortune and his riot grrrl activist wife, Kathleen Hanna, shelled out a close to three million clams for a loft-style co-operative apartment in New York City's Chelsea nabe.

We have yet to suss out a sale price but online listings show the high-floor residence was last priced at $2,950,000 and property records show the seller is an influential lady-executive and accomplished luxury goods expert who's currently employed at Ralph Lauren and who acquired the centrally situated co-op in 2007 for $1,995,000.

The boutique-sized building near the border between Chelsea and the bustling (and residentially trendy) Flatiron District was originally built in 1909 as a sewing factory and, at some point—we don't know when and aren't convinced it's important enough to figure out, was converted to a 16-unit residential co-operative. The building offers its well-heeled owners and residents roomy loft-style apartments, a newly renovated lobby, a separately keyed mail room, a state-of-the-art video security system, and a web-enabled virtual doorman. For all that, as per listing materials, maintenance charges for the apartment ring up to $3,600 per month.

Listing details show the 2,500-ish square foot spread has a compact but proper foyer—a too-rare feature in urban loft dwellings, two well-separated bedrooms, three on-the-small-side bathrooms with nary a window between them, a good-sized laundry room tucked behind the kitchen, and a central living/dining/kitchen space that stretches more than 42 feet from front to back.

Exposed concrete ceilings are laced—as code, no doubt—requires—by fire sprinkler piping and there are medium brown hardwood floors throughout the loft that look to Your Mama a little too perfect to be original to the building. Believe it or not, puppies, there are many people who detest open-plan layouts like this but the four over-sized and south-facing windows in the living room will surely appeal to all the city dwellers who appreciate natural light in their living spaces.

The spacious and expensively equipped kitchen is fitted with honey-gold toned Shaker style wood cabinets topped with sand-colored granite and high-grade appliances. We dig the pantry wall with its glass-fronted doors on the upper cabinets but we're bitterly vexed by that curved breakfast bar island. Why? Why make it curved? Nobody asked Your Mama what we think—and what we think matters piddly-squat, of course—but we think the curve is way too self-conscious and makes it appear as if the kitchen is trying way too hard to be cool or contemporary or—the worst—interesting. Anyhoodles, poodles...

Located less than optimally directly off the main living area, the lone guest/family bedroom has three closets, two south-facing windows, and floor-to-ceiling built-in book shelves that mean the room easily does double, triple and/or quadruple duty as a library/study/office.

Nestled privately at the very back of the apartment, the 26-foot long, trapezoidal-shaped master bedroom has three super-sized windows on two walls, plenty of room for a sitting area/reading nook, a small-ish attached bathroom slathered in honed marble, and a fitted walk-in closet that all by itself is a whole lot larger than a whole lotta studio apartments in lower Manhattan. Marketing materials suggest the master bedroom closet is so large it could be converted to a third bedroom but opt not to mention that the potential third bedroom would not have a window.

Avid celebrity real estate watchers may recall that last year, in April (2012), Mister Horovitz and Miz Hanna sold a 19th-century townhouse on Spring Street in SoHo for $5.5 million to a Canadian developer who, after a bitter battle with preservationists, razed the house and its next door neighbor last October to make way for a mixed use retail-condo building. Interestingly enough, one of the Canadian developer's creditors recently initiated foreclosure proceedings on a $5.6 million loan partially secured by the Spring Street townhouse because, they claim, the townhouse was razed without their permission. It's a tangled tale and, iffin any of y'all enjoy these sorts of property debacles, the kids at Curbed have a small archive with lots of links over more stories on the matter posted on other property-centric websites.